How the Moonwalk Works

seen your moonwalk. It's you know, herky jerky. You know, it's that kind of moonwalk that guys like us do. I don't understand, you know you kind of it kind of simulates the moonwalk. I see, you know what I mean. It's a it's an echo of a moonwalk. I wouldn't call it smooth and floaty, oh I would. Yeah, Now, I know it's not a great moonwalks, right. I never learned the moonwalk because I didn't try to practice the moonwalk more than like once, and I was like, I

can't do that. Oh yeah. I just bailed on it like my brother practiced and got okay at it. I'm surprised he didn't like teach it as a class for free to children in need. Now he got uh, he got okay at it? Um, But I just I don't know if I I think I bail on things that aren't easy for me. Well, that's definitely a candidate for that. Um. Yeah, I think that's a trait I have. I don't like to spend a lot of time on something that I don't think i'm good at. I'm not one of those like, no, man,

I'm gonna try the moonwalk until I learn it. I see. I was like, maybe I just im not a moonwalker, don't you? Didn't you say you bail on books too that don't like capture your attention at this point in your life? Was that you? I don't think I said that, but I I didn't say that. But I will you work your way through a book? Well, I'll give it a fair shot. It's been a while since I've bailed on a book, though, because I usually just pick good books like that. I know we're really good. Uh. I

don't know how long I give a book. How long do you give a book? I will give a book two pages, yeah, but like three or four times? Right? Like, what am I missing? Let me try that again. Yeah, yeah, that's fair. I just write a book called Head Full of Ghosts, which is pretty neat. It's like a psychological thriller. Huh. I haven't read a fiction booking forever, and then right now either I'm reading the right stuff, Wolf Classic, and it's that. I think Tom Wolf might be the greatest

reporter of all time. Oh yeah, oh yeah, I don't think there's anybody better. Our buddy Joe Randazzoh oh yeah. At midnight fame people are quaite. A minute, I thought he was at the Onion. Now he said at midnight.

He used to work at the Onion. Uh. He just recommended a book which I'm really interested in that I wanted to tell you about because it sounds like it's right up your one alley called Sapiens A Brief History of Humankind by You've All Noah Harari and the It had has a pretty remarkable thesis, which is that humans can Humans didn't kill each other off because they can cooperate in large numbers, because we have an ability, a unique ability. Animals don't have two believe in things that

exist only in our imagination. Huh, Like government and money and God. And he said, all of these things allow us to cooperate. Like we talked about in our money episode. It's like money has that paper has no value. We just all agreed. So it's essentially fiction, the cool concept of money. It's just something we've all agreed on. And he said, is it's this cooperation by believing in these fictional things that is the only reason that humans didn't

kill each other off, like you know, any other weird species. Yeah, I've got to check that out. Said it sounds super interesting. He said it was amazing, so and thank you for relating that. Yeah, I want to Maybe you should read it and just tell me about it, because I'm still have never read four Man. I'm a fiction reader. I try to I try to read nonfiction, and this I don't know. I just like a good fictional yarn more. I'm I'm quite the opposite. Like I told you, I

wanted to be a Civil War buff. I got one of those huge books that's supposed to be great, and I just can't do it. Like The Moonwalk, you don't like fiction, I do like it, it's just for the so much of the time I'm reading for work that see I think he would enjoy fiction as a break. Well, that's why I read head Fellow Ghosts. I was like, I'm reading a fiction book. I need to just like read something different and use my imagination again. And um it worked. It was like it had an effect on

me that what was it? Yeah? What was it about? It was about a girl who may or may not be possessed and like how her family unravels around her. Is it like poplit? I don't know that. It's you know, like easy to read. Dean Coontzon, Oh no, no, it was. It was a little more literary than that, and I wish I'm sorry to the author who who wrote the book. I don't remember the dude's name, but he does a good job. I'm sorry to Dean Counts and John Grisham all of a sudden, Uh, they know, they know what

they are. Let guys know what they are. Although Dean Coutz man, that guy's imagination is fantastic. Man, I always assumed that he was better than Stephen King because he could finish the story. I've never read a Stephen King book. What, I don't read a lot of that stuff. Okay, I read one Dean Kuntz Book in my early twenties and one night. That's the only time I've ever done that. Well, yeah, that was a good thing about it Kuntz Book because

you can go through it like crazy. Started reading it like eight or nine and I stopped at like five in the morning. But each one is way different than the others, I mean really differently. The guy's got a great imagination. You should read some of Stephen King's work like he is. He's he's so unfairly I was actually talking to Hodgman about this the other day. He's like, very unfairly criticized as a hack, but he's actually, oh yeah,

a lot of people are doing couldn't sucks. But if you just because he's so prolific and because he very famously has trouble finishing a story, Yeah, but he's like nobody can get inside the mind, like the dark side of a person's the average person's mind better than Stephen King. He's just a he's a great storyteller. Aside from the ending part. So what's the Shining? It is probably the one I should read, Probably not because you're so used

to Kubrick's Shining and it's just so radically. That's the one. Right, that's a big one. I've never read the stand I would start with the short stories. They're fantastic, right, those he can finish. It's the largest What do you mean not finish like this amazing build up and then the resolutions, like, so he finishes you just mean it's okay, right, it's it's not left unfinished. It's the resolution is um The

payoff is not so great. Yeah, interesting, and it's still fine, but it's he's so good at building things up that it's almost it would be almost impossible to finish it. I don't know if we should call this beginning book talk with Josh and Chuck or patting the episode. You want to talk moon walk? Yeah, we needed a little something. This is a short one. Well, you were saying that, you're like you just couldn't do it. This is Let me. Let me tell you how I approached the moonwalk. All right.

My left hand was covered in a white glove with sequence sewn on that my mom made for me. Did you really wearing the thriller jacket a little black pants? Yeah, that's how my moon walked. I was still not that great at it. You were, you were in man, this is so in my wheelhouse. Yeah, yeah, I wasn't. I mean I listened to pop music. But I was also the influenced by my well he's now my brother in law,

but the General. The General started dating my sister when I was twelve, Okay, so like he was always around and he was like, you're twelve years old. You need to listen to the Almond Brothers and Leonard Skinnered and Molly Hatchett and Blackfoot in the Atlanta Rhythm section, the Doobie Brothers, like heck yeah. But I also listened to the American Top forty every week. So, I mean I was an MTV. I was glued to so you can't be glued to MTV and not like digest ing some

of that stuff. But I was never never owned parachute pants or but so that was the only sequence thing I eve w owed. But that's very sweet that your mom did that. I think so too, and it was a very sweet gesture. Um. But I think one of the other reasons the Moonwalk spoke to me and I didn't realize it until researching this article, Chuck that I was also super into break dancing at the time, and the moonwalk is actually not a breaking move. It's a

popping move. But for all but actual breaking and popping dancers, it was the same thing. Yeah, I don't I don't see how it's a popping move. I saw that in the article and I couldn't put it together because thing is so herky jerky, and a good moonwalk is so smooth and buttery. Well, so lockin is herky jerky, right, Well,

no popping is too popping? Is that? Like? Yeah, but it's also I wish this is really not good for audio, but it's also so you know, the one where you hold out one hand and make a wave, the wave goes through your body to the other hand, the classic popping is it? Yeah? And I was like, okay, I'll bet the worms popping wrong. The worms are breaking move. I clearly don't know, but the average person who's who's doing these dances is probably popping, locking and breaking it

at the same time. Yeah. And and I know we covered breakdancing some in the hip hop episode, but we should do it total breakdance, like give it its full do, Okay, and we're gonna call it the total breakdance episode. But we I mean, we've got to cover some of it here, because there's there's there's such a basis of it in the moonwalk. The moonwalk castletch a basis in it. But the moonwalk goes even further back than popping and lock in, which we'll talk about in a minute. It goes all

the way back to the thirties. Should we take a break? Oh man, yes, stop, all right. Josh just taught me how a moon walking. Now I'm great at it. And this I can't remember what that's called. The wave the waves where you stand up at a baseball game. So what is this? I don't know. I mean, people that don't know what Josh is doing right now are probably frustrated. But it's that you know that move you do where you wave the one arm and it goes to your body and the other arm waves and then you pass

it to your friend. Yes, that's a popping move, is it? Yeah? Body popping clearly doesn't. I don't know what popping means. I think the name is a bit of a misnomer. Yeah, probably all right. And by the way, people, you might as well get to this. I'm not gonna be able to gush much about Michael Jackson because I'm one of the people who thinks he did bad things in his private life. So if you don't hear me talking about how awesome he is, that's why I have a hard

time separating the art from the artist. Well you want to throw it out there, man, if you believe that, how could you? Yeah, I'm unconvinced at this point, all right, But I mean seeing my own a. Yeah, that's a good one, good one. A bunch of people are like, that's what c o amy covering my own a. Speaking for myself anyway, if you hear a little bit of like callousness in my voice, that's that's why. So, uh, going back in time, Uh, it was not invented by

that man. It was like you said, it goes back to the nineties. If you look on the YouTube's they're like history of the Moonwalk, you will see a nice video. It shows the evolution of this dance, starting with Cab Callaway in the nineteen thirties doing something called the Buzz. The Great band Leader Jazz big band leader. He remains unaccused of anything. He was also awesome in the Blues Brothers. Oh yeah, wow, he was still around for that. That's right.

I forgot about that about fifty years on. Yeah. Uh so in the nineteen thirties he did something called the Buzz and it was a little more herky jerky and not as smooth. Then there was something that this article mentions called the camel Walk, which I looked into, or the collegiate walk that like Sammy Davis Jr. Did in this video. I don't think it looks anything like the moonwalk, not really. I think they're going forward first of all, right, which is a big one, and it's cool. It's a

cool move. Sure, James Brown dares Sammy to do it. Sammy's like, all right, I'll do it. So, boy, could you imagine being in that audience, Man, Sammy Davis Junior and James Brown on the same stage. Who do we have now? Bieber and whoever else? I don't even know him, Bieber and Bieber. It's a nightmare group. Yeah. So uh sorry, man, it's not old. You're not old because you're trash and justin Bieber you're just saying it's a jerk. You know. He really has done a lot of stuff to say

to earn that. Yeah, it's not like he's some like super nice guy. People are just unfair to like look at some of the videos and like pan in a bucket in a restaurant. Did you ever see that one? No? I heard about that one, though. Well, I think he's just too much wealth and not enough guidance and probably too much booze and stuff. I think maybe he might be somewhat reformed now, but really I think he's grown up a little bit, but I don't follow it that closely.

Just the p in the bucket thing, Yeah, I mean that was enough to turn me off forever. Win him back, justin win back, good luck. So we were talking about the walk or the camel walk, right, so, um, you were saying it doesn't look like a moonwalk. In fact, it looks kind of like a reverse moonwalk sort of. But the point is it was it's somebody Sammy Davis Jr. Floating Their feet are floating a little bit. They appear to be floating while they move, al Right, So it's

related to the moonwalk, right, I'll give you that. The one that's like dead on though is Bill Bailey in nineteen fifty five full on moonwalks off the stage. Yeah, in nineteen at the Apollo. Yeah, and there's a great video and it's at the very end of the video, but I urge you to not just skip to the end, because you've got two or three minutes of some sweet, sweet tap dancing. Yeah, which I didn't realize how much I loved until I saw this guy and he was

supposedly trained by Mr bo Jangles himself. Really Ye, that was a real person. Yeah, I don't remember his name, but Bojangles. Yeah. I love tap dancing. I didn't know it and I watched this sound was like, man, that's amazing. You should go see Gregory Hines. Is he still doing it? Probably there's no way he's just like I'm done tapping. Yeah it tap was life for that guy. Yeah, I mean that stuff is amazing. And what's the guy's name? I can't remember, Well, I did see that movie. Um

there was a guy, uh savyon Glover. Oh I know who you're talking about, like much more recent Yeah, like mean mean tap dancer, Like he just shouting insults while he was you. He looks stupid, but watch me dance.

So Bill Bailey in nineteen fifty five, like legit moonwalked and um, it's hard to say, like he's the guy that invented it, because dance, like any art form, is just borrowed and changed and morphs along the years to where I don't know that anyone can specifically say, like Bill Bailey might have seen it from someone else and then like that's a hot move. Yeah, he seems like the type of um talent that he could have come

up with it himself. Yeah. But what's weird, Chuck, is that that's apparently where it went and died, Like he created the moonwalk and it's stopped with him for a while. No, if you go back in the history of it, the people who popularized the moonwalk didn't know that he had done that. Oh yeah, yeah, I see what you means. So simultaneously, there's also some movement that's similar called the

air walk, but it's mine. Yea like Marcel Marcel's walking against the wind, very famous routine where his feet are floating. It's called air walking and it's strictly mine, right. Yeah. The difference between that and the moonwalk is that they're stationary and acting like they're walking forward and the wind is blowing them, but they're not going backwards. It's but it's also not part of a dance either. Correct, some this is but this is a weird little thing that

I didn't realize. There was apparently a mime. There's a period of the seventies where mimes were cool. Did you know that? Yeah? I mean that was I remember watching Shields and Yarnell as a kid on television on major network TV. I was all brainstem at the time because I was totally unaware of that. Yeah, miming was a big deal and that like I would practice that, Okay, okay a little bit, not for years, but yeah, I practice miming. What a bizarre period of American pop culture.

Shields and Yarnell. This mime couple had a were they two dudes or a man and a woman? You were married? Okay? Um? That they They had their own TV show, Shields and Yarnell was watched apparently by a lot of people, including you. It was also watched by a dude named Jeffrey Daniel. Yeah. Man, Frey Daniel was a great dancer, probably still is he is? Uh. Not only was he on Solid Gold, he was in the band Shalomar with Jody Whatley. Yeah, Jody Whatley and um.

Shalimar was created by the great Don Cornelius of soul train R I P I believe did he die a few years ago? And uh, Gary Mumford was the original singer. And then on album number two, Gerald Brown took over, like you said, with Jody Whatley of Shallomar Fame, I guess and then later on her own fame. Yeah she was she had her own solo career, right and uh and this guy Jeffrey Daniel, Right, So Jeffrey Daniel was

dancing in the sheets. Remember that hit. Yes, it's great Footloose soundtrack song Dancing and the Sheets, dude, dude, and that that was the eighties. The eighties stuff they you know, came around in the seventies with more disco. It was super disco. We to start with. Um. But this dude, Jeffrey Daniels who was in Shalimar, who's also a solid gold dancer. He had a pretty awesome move called the backslide. And when you watch him backslide, uh, he's he's moonwalking,

total total moonwalk. It totally is and um. Later on he was interviewed like where did you get this? Where you know where? Where you know? Where did you come up with the idea? He was like, I was super into Shields and Yarnelle at the time. So miming influenced the backslide, which, as we'll find out in a second, directly led to the moonwalk. And we'll get to that finally after this. You alright, Chuck, we're back. Yes, Jeffrey Daniel.

I watched that interview that's on the YouTube. It was on a British talk show called soccer a m of the two thousand seven things. They had him on Soccer Am. Apparently it's not just about sports, but they have like comedy bits and pop culture stuff. Uh So he was surprised on that show. They showed the clip of of Bailey in the in the fifties and he was like, what's that. He's like, I've never even seen that. He was surprised to see that someone was legit moonwalking, you

know whatever, fifties something years earlier, the same move. It's not like, oh, that's kind of close, like maybe the camel walk or um the buzz like Cab calloway. It was a moonwalk. It was the moonwalk. But that's what I'm saying, that's what's so bizarre is that this guy invented the moonwalk in ve and it began and ended with him, and it took mimes getting a TV show

to create the moonwalk as we understand it today. Talk about chaos theory, you know what I'm saying, though, like other people could have influenced the mimes that knew about Bill Bailey, like it could guess, guess, that's entirely possible. But Marcel Marceau was doing the air walk as far back as the thirties before Bill Bailey. Was he around in the thirties from what I understand, Okay, which is weird because well he was pretty old when in the

seventies when he hit it big. So yeah, I think then he was doing it in the thirties, because that's what this article says in it. I didn't find anything. I didn't find any footage of him from the thirties, like all of it seemed to be from the seventies or early eighties. Well, the heyday of mimes also looked. I was curious why people hate mimes and did little research, and of course there's no no like definitive thing. It's not like a phobia, no. But everything I saw I

came down to a few things. They look like clowns in clowns. We did a whole episode on that, and uh, the silent thing seems to bug people. And then just the notion that there, you know, they'll get up all in your face in the part you're out just enjoying your day and a mime will come up and be like, you know, to start doing their like intruding upon you to do their act, which I don't even know is I don't even know if that's the case over there. Oh it is, believe me, mine very interestive like to

start static and I finish it. Uh So back to Jeffrey Daniel. He's dancing on Soul Train, He's dancing on Solid Gold. There's another couple of dancers name Jeron Casper candidate great name, and Derek Cooley Jackson j A X s O N. Another cool name, and they were moonwalking around or backsliding around, and so all these dudes were basically kind of laying the foundation for what the moonwalk would come to be. It got real, like even if you watch Bailey's it's a legit moonwalk, but it's not

as smooth as Daniel ended up doing it. You know, like when you see him on solid Gold, he like that's one of the smoother moonwalks you'll ever see, and he probably debuted it for the first time in American history on TV on Top of the Pops. Was talking about yeah, smooth, so um, people thought he was cheating. Yeah, They're like, this is the floor oils or something like what is that we watching? Right? It blew everybody away, right,

but everybody's no one knew who this guy was. Really, it was a solid gold answer at the time, everybody knew who Michael Jackson was. So in about a year later, almost exactly a year later, UM, NBC broadcast this special called Motown Retrospective and it was a huge, huge thing. Um. Diana Ross did her first appearance with the Supreme since

nineteen sixty nine. Marvin Gaye played, Um. There was a battle of the bands between the Temptations and the Four Tops Stevie Wonder Um, I'm sure everybody when it was like a soccer game. UM, and Michael Jackson comes out right, and people like, who's he? I mean he was pretty big at the time. Now, of course he was. He was huge, but so was Marvin Gaye in the Four Tops and Stevie Wonder, Right, Michael Jackson comes out and

brings the house down. And one of the reasons he brought the house sound was because he's doing Billy Jean, which when the thing came out was the number one song in America. But during the dance he did the moonwalk, and it was the first time basically anybody who had seen uh had ever seen the moonwalk. Yeah, like, like no one in America watching this NBC special had been watching Top of the Pops stuff on solid gold here and there. But it was definitely like a mind blower

for because it was such a widely watched special for sure. Um, well, here's the deal. He was taught the moonwalk depends on who right. Some people say he sought out Daniel said, you teach me. Other people say no, it was Casper Candidate or Coolie Jackson. But from what I gather it, it sounds like all those guys eventually worked with him over the years. Is like either choreographers or choreographers slash backup dancers. So he he learned it from some or

all of those people. Yeah, Like, um, Daniel choreographed like his smooth Criminal video, and Coolie and Casper are the dudes who like lean with him on other that very famous, like crazy side lane that he did in the video. Does he do one of those de lean move? The crazy side lean, I think is what it's called. Can I say what happened to me yesterday? What did you do a lean? Well? I was looking at videos on how to moonwalk tutorials okay, uh, to see if I

could get it. And when you watch it slowed down and broken down, it's like, oh, well, I get it. It's not that complex, but it's hard to master. And we'll get to all that coming up, Like I'm sure we're gonna bumble our way through a description about the moonwalk, but we're gonna try. But then I started following into that little YouTube vortex of videos and I saw this guy saying, here's how you do the lean, and I was like, I want to know how to do that

because it's cool. It is it's like an illusion. It is well, it's not, it's real. And there's a guy, well, I don't and there's a guy named Robert Hoffman who It turns out this guy is great. He does he's dance tutorials and he's kind of funny and and does it in such a way that it's interesting to watch, and so I encourage everyone to go watch Robert Hoffman's tutori on how to do the lean, and he kind of explains, He fully explains the illusion and how to

how to do it well. And I look at it and I'm like, oh man, you're about to follow over right, And then he pulls it back, and I thought, I'm gonna practice the lean because that will be like I've always wanted to know how to dance, but I'm just not good at it. But I want to get like the lean down at least so I can bust that out.

It's just like standing in place, Yeah, but you know you shouldn't even do it on a dance floors while you're having a conversation with somebody, like slowly, slowly, just start to leave, so they're about to go over, snap back into place and be like, what if You're totally right? Because I don't go to dance parties anymore anyway, What

am I talking about? Regular parties? Yeah? I would just be in the office one day in the kitchen and I'll he's gonna go, oh my god, I didn't go over Oh man, um, all right, so where are we? So we're talking about how there's a there's a discrepancy over who taught Michael Jackson the moonwalk. Correct. The thing is is, Michael Jackson never claimed to have invented the moonwalk. People just assumed he had because he was huge at

the time. And he also later said that he didn't know what he what his dance routine was gonna be for Billy Jean for this motown special. So a lot of people say, well, obviously he just did the spur of the moment or whatever. No, totally untrue. He employed choreographers and including those three guys like you said, all

three of them worked with him as choreographers. And he also, as far as his sister Janet I think, says, they went to see Shalamar at Disneyland before this and saw um Jeffrey Daniel doing the backslide and said, dude, you gotta teach me that. Here's some money, teach me the moonwalk.

Oh wait, it's not called the moonwalk yet. And he also said that he never called it the moonwalk, that it was actually the media that came up with that, but he adopted it for surely some I mean obviously someone named it some Yeah, some ap reporters like named there's me. Uh for what it's worth, Daniel said, besides, she shields and Yard now that the the Electric boogaloosy is who inspired him as well. And I looked up

those guys. They're the ones who originated body popping. Yeah, and they were a dance group and I was looking at one of them and I was like, let's rerun. Okay, you're talking about locking. Yes, it is Rerun. Yes, he was huge, and he was a member of the Lockers, which was at one point the Electric Boogaloos. You know those are two different Well, no, at one point they were. They were merged, okay, and then then that's where popping and locking came from, because popping and lock and are

two different types of day. Originally they were the Electric Boogaloo Lockers, and then I guess they diverged at one point. Okay, maybe they were like I want to lock, I want to pop. Well, the dude who invented locking, it was good friends with Rerun and like, if you think of Rerun dancing, like those wrist twists and the jumps and the suspender stuff, that's lock and totally. And they were on that dance squad the Lockers. It was Don Campbell

who invented locking. Rerun and then Tony Basil, the girl who sang mickey. Yeah. So if you don't know who reruns, you're like, what in the world are you guys talking about? What you oldsters? Um? Oh yeah, it's a It was a TV show called What's Happening about these three friends

in South central l A in the seventies. Very funny. Uh, and Rerun was one of the characters played by the great Fred Barry who was in the Lockers in the electric Googlue Lockers and just go watch go type rerun dancing What's happening and uh, what you're watching is pure locking. One of the great TV theme songs of all time too. Now, if you throw what he's it really is. What instrument was that like a klezmer or something. I have no idea.

It's weird, but it's a great one. Um. The if you throw in that, that our movement, that wave and the worm, you've got Papa and walking and breaking. Yeah, what people think of as breakdancing. That's pretty amazing. Like we've I was thinking the other day about how in our lifetime is people our age and there's a range. But we've seen like a complete, like two complete at least two new complete art forms created in hip hop music and that and breakdancing created out of whole cloth.

It's amazing. And the new sports like what like you know, X games and snowboarding and skateboarding, like we've like seen these new things created. And you always think that, well, music is, what else can you do? I guess chechnow and all that stuff that was created as well, Um, jazz, well that was before us a little, but no, it's true. I just think it's pretty neat to look you know, I know what you're talking about. Two you you're like, well,

there's grunge. Well grunge is an offshoot of like rock and roll or whatever. But yeah, no, I mean these were completely new art forms that some people still think are a fad, which is funny. Really well, you know you hear like older Mudgeons like rap is gonna be a fad. No, wrap is brand new art form here forever, and it changes in morphs and is you know, it's amazing. It's neat. So we did a hip hop episode. You mentioned that, Yeah, it was good. I thought for you know,

a couple of shamos like us. I think we did a pretty decent job, agreed. Um, alright, So do we need to explain how to break dance? I want to hear you explain it. No, I can't. You mean moonwalk? Yeah? What to say? Break dance? Break? Yeah? Yeah, we need to say how to moonwalk? Okay, so go ahead, take it away. Well you're the one who does it so well, all right, all right, are you ready? So you start? First of all, you want to take off your shoes and put on some socks on a nice slick floor. Yeah,

don't try to do it on like um uh pine bark. No. Maybe pour yourself a vodka gimlet. Yeah, well that's the that's the drink of the moonwalker. So um. You you are on a slick floor, wearing socks, and you stand straight up and down right, and you take your right foot and you put it out in front of you with your foot flat on the floor. Okay, bend your left knee and go up on the ball of your left foot. Okay, now holding yourself in place with just

your the ball of your foot. All of everything is on whatever foot you have up, the ball of whatever foot you have up. Take a sip of that gimlet, right, maybe another one too, I need one now, And then you drag your foot back the foot that's on the floor, and as you drag your right foot back past your left, you drop your left and you drop your left heel and raise your right and then you repeat the same process and you're floating. There's the moonwalk, a k. The backslide.

You're pretty square if you call it the moonwalk. These days, we had to title this episode moonwalk because we wanted everybody to know what we were talking about. But it's called the backslide. Okay, that is correct. And I watched the tutorial, which the guy who did the tutorial actually wasn't great at it. Um like he he had it down like how to teach you. But when he did it, I was going, yeah, it's not great. Was Steve Brule? No, God,

that would be great. I just think the guy had the wrong shoes on personally, But I'll bet that's what he blames it onto. The thing he stressed for a good moonwalk is a long stride, which is where you're lacking. If I can be honest. Oh am, I doing it too too short? Yeah, okay, long stride Josh Okay, I didn't realize you've had so many formed opinions about my moonwalk. Uh. That foot that you're keeping flat needs to be so so flat to create the illusion. What what am I doing?

I'm not talking about you know, your foot was pretty good and flat. That's your stride. I pretend like it's dead, like my foot is dead when I drag it. Uh. And then when you when you go to switch feet, he said, you really just snap them both real hard to create that illusion like a good completely synchronized simultaneous snap up and down with those two feet, your long stride, keep that foot flat, keep that vodka gimlet flowing, and

you're gonna be moonwalking in no time. And then you can also because what you're doing is it's supposed to look like you're walking while you're moving backward. You're walking forward but moving backwards, and that's the definition of the moonwal So you can, um, you can like add your arms swinging, lean like your till till your body forward a little bit if you're real good. Michael Jackson used to like move his head up and down in rhythm to his walking or whatever, and it adds to the effect.

Totes Shalamar. I feel like I kind of should try it, try it right now. Well, I'm not gonna do it now. You don't have a vodka gimlet, Nope? Are you got anything else? And you go get some cocktail onions. Those are great Gibson onions. Oh is that it Gibson and I'm thinking of yeah, but that's sim It is the lime juice roses lime, Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh. If you want to know more about vodka gimlets, you can type that word in the search part how stuff works dot com.

And since I's a gimlet, it's time for listener now before listener mail. This is ah, I'm gonna call this correction time. Okay, we need like Lola Vie music. We do so you know, we have corrections on the show from time to time. This was sort of a big one because we really goofed on the Gettysburg Address episode. Um, and boy did we hear about it. Remember how I said I wanted to be a Civil war buff. I don't anymore. You know, you have a rough start to

your career as a Civil war buff. They're not nice people. As it turns out, no one on the internet's a nice person. No, I was. I was just very surprised if people got angry that we messed something up, just like, so, what did we mess up? We said fifty thou dead, It was fifty total casualties. Is that what it was? So we messed up and said mistaked casualties for dead

when in fact casualties is dead, missing or wounded. Um. And then we also said that while we were talking about the percentage of the army, like it was this much a percentage of of the Union army and a third of Lee's army. But it was just for the army fighting in that battle, not the total Union army and the total Confederate army. And we very specifically were like, this is for the entire army. So we got a little excited and a little ahead of ourselves. Well, clearly

we're the most evil people of the century. So very sorry about that. Civil War Buffs you know now, don't have a contact Chuck again. Please all right, listener mail

now yeah, um, I'm just gonna read this one. Hey guys, great podcast, especially like how you pointed out, Uh, but here's some of the bogus studies how to do good research, especially like how you guys pointed out the pressure when you're an understudy to do studies that support the current theories of your employer, without getting into a ton of detail. I've been there, and I left research altogether because I

became pretty disillusioned with it all. One thing you did not mention is that entire industries get erected based on the results of a few initial studies. Uh, the sexiness of the studies. Aside, which is what you talked about. The research or does a good job and does not show anything, or has a negative study, their funding is often at stake. For my personal experiences, is the largest basis for bias. WHOA, that was a mouthful. It's hard

to say when you're missing the tooth um research. Researchers become heavily vested and being right from a face perspective, if a c in a monetary perspective, we don't really recognize realize this because the scope of the impact of the studies are usually small. But that researcher who suddenly lost all their grants, it's a pretty high price to pay for being ethical. I don't really have any answers to how to clean it up. But science is contrarian

and by nature anti consensus. Instead, we have a system that rewards only rewards reinforcement. Good researchers have to be allowed to say, if you did this great study and found nothing without the fear of losing grant money. Amen, that's from Trevor. Thanks Trevor. That was very illuminating. Yeah, an enlightening, very very adit. Yeah did you say that? Yeah, Rudy, really, I don't. Okay. Uh. If you want to get in touch with us, like Trevor did, you can tweak to

us that. That's why sk podcast. You can join us on Facebook, dot com slash stuff you should know. You can send us an email to stuff podcast. The work out I've already doing on the web costs shouldn't dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics because it how stuff works. Dot com h